I have to say that as I looked over everyone else’s blogs, my first reaction was jealousy. Everyone offered thoughtful and offbeat responses that really made me think. They take what we’ve learned in class and explored them in the real world. I can only hope that I’ve done this in my own posts...
Let me call out a few posts that really summed up what the semester has meant to me:
I enjoyed Sarah’s course wrap up, and not only because I agreed with much of what she said. It is hard, regardless of being a communications major or not, to keep up on the different world’s perspectives of what is going on. Having said that, I, and I think Sarah would agree with me, am indebted to having this course teach me again that my world is not only my own. This sounds so simple, but it really resonates with me. As I have said in previous posts, I am now reading Al Jazeera’s English site as one of my news sources on a regular basis. It reaches a broader scope of international news that I wish the New York Times reported on. For instance, I read all about the Ghanaian elections on Al Jazeera, while I had to search the Times for an article that was run by Reuters. I guess I have a personal interest after studying in Accra and having many Ghanaian friends calling me during voting because they know how excited I am about elections in general. (Mind you, these were the same people who were up at four in the morning just for news that Obama had been elected, so they clearly also take an interest in politics.) I appreciate the new news source. When I lived in Paris I got used to reading the International Herald Tribune diligently and it became my source for English news. It makes me happy to have a third paper to add to my repertoire of reading in the morning over, as Dariwish said perfectly, a virgin cup of coffee.
Another blog that struck me was Jen’s. She wrote that she felt apprehensive about sharing her thoughts in class, and I relate to that more than I wish to admit. Helga came up during a group exercise that we were doing after we read “Arab in America” and called me quiet. I came home to my apartment and was so perplexed by the comment that I shared it with my roommates. This was awhile ago, but I remember them laughing and saying that they could never imagine me being quiet. I appreciate that a classroom setting is a bit intimidating, but I thought our class was quite open and I tried to express my opinions. My view of the world is different than I imagine most Americans to be, and maybe this has made me bashful in my expression of what is happening. For example, when I called an Egyptian friend to ask him what he thought of Ramadan TV, he said that is was an improvement of what his parents were used to, but that it was basically bullshit compared to what we watch in the US. He has lived in the States for some time, but I think I was expecting him to praise the way that TV brings his family together. Corny, but I guess I really have absorbed those readings from class. I know that individuals exist across the globe, as do individual experiences, but I can’t shake the feeling that I get from my Arab friends that a lot of their shows they watch when they’re with their families at home are copycats of “western” shows. To be honest, I wouldn’t point fingers and say this, but when they do it’s hard to ignore it.
Jen, I’m sorry to pick on you, but this quote is priceless: “America does have great qualities and principles what gets me is when we try and enforce what works for us on to everyone else.” Americans’ condescending attitude is something that haunts me every time that I am abroad or read about America’s diplomatic strategies. The issues that come with globalization and modernity haunt me to a certain extent. I love that I can sit in my apartment in New York and listen to music that was produced thousands of miles away, but I’m not sure where this leaves stereotypes or even the question of the Clash. I guess these hybridization questions are unanswerable, as much as we’ve tried to address them and look at them closely. Sometimes I wish that I could have a clear black and white answer, but that wouldn’t be life, right? My hope is that many of these questions become moot in my lifetime because people will be so over stereotypes and pitting themselves against “the other” to discover themselves. I guess only time will tell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmMd7qbpguk
Inch'allah
I thought of this song while we were talking about globalization/hybridization and music...MC Solaar is from Senegal but is really popular all over the world. (I would say that he's most famous in America for being in the finale of Sex & the City when Carrie is running along the Seine.) The song is called 'Inch'allah', but I'm not sure if that's a play on Insha'Allah or if that's just how the French spell it or if it's slang or what. Anyway, it has a sort of 'traditional' Muslim background to it, especially in the beginning. It was really popular when I lived in Paris and was played on the radio and in clubs all the time.
Au Pays De Ghandi is also by MC Solaar and is a great example of globalization within the Muslim world. A Senegalese man singing in French about India...:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWLnRrhYenI&NR=1
Au Pays De Ghandi
I have to say that overall, I enjoyed blogging and having access to everyone’s views on what we were covering in class. The blog also opened up my eyes to what was going on in the world around me, and to think critically about what I read or saw through the lens of the Clash or Orientalism. I was surprised by how often these thoughts popped into my head after we had discussed something in class. I guess this happens a lot when you have a thought provoking class, but it seemed as if everywhere I turned had to do with class, from a newspaper to museums.
After this semester, I enjoy looking at the news in a different light. After studying media for three full years, I think that most of us in class understand certain aspects of western journalism and are weary of it. For instance, all of us are savvy audience members who can recognize a bias when is comes up in the media. Those biases are sometimes expected by everyone. Fox News is conservative, NPR is liberal. But media biases also exist beneath the views’ radar. This, I believe is dangerous. I think this is the case for a lot of American audience members looking at the Middle East. Seeing the meaning of something outside of yourself is humility, which is something that I think Americans, if I can generalize, are missing. There is a humility that makes you proud—to see the meaning of something else is good but sometimes takes courage or a different perspective. To take the time to sit down and see either the ‘big picture’ or to contemplate the other side is to try and be just.
I know that many people don’t have the time to sit and read a bunch of different newspapers to get their views, but it is important to remember that there are other sources for news other than your own countries, or from people who definitely share your point of view. It has been so interesting for me to read Al Jazeera online, and I think it really gives me more of a world view than an American newspaper, such as the New York Times, which is what I regularly read. It gives me a bit of a thrill to be able to get any news that I want, at any time of day, which I guess is why I like being a Comm student because I get to learn all of the many ways that it's possible for me to do so.
no Internet over Thanksgiving, sorry that I'm posting this a few days after writing it:
I guess that I have to admit that I wish the group who attacked Mumbai today were not Muslim. I would have been pretty self-righteous in telling people that Muslims are not the only people who do bad things. I know that they are not, but the news that we get of mass killings and terror attacks seem to tell the American people otherwise. I separate mass killings and terror attacks because they are not the same. I believe that these people could have killed many more people if they wished to last night. The publicity that they get from attacking places where high profile people and tourists are makes a much bigger splash on international news. I’m guessing that if a hundred people were killed in a local market or something such as that, it would have only been a scrolling on the bottom of the screen, if that, rather than taking over many news channels as ::breaking news::
I wonder what the American news channel in Iraq makes of this. I’m guessing that that don’t have a lot of tact in saying that this was a Muslim group who were apparently doing this in hopes of turning India into a Muslim state, which is what CNN and other news channels are saying here.
There was another curious thing. After Decca Mujahideen came out and said that they were responsible, all that the news anchors and experts said was that they had never heard of the group. However, all that it took for me to at learn at least the meaning was a quick Googling of the words that were flashing on the screen. It seemed as if everyone was complacent in their not knowing much about what was happening on the streets, even though there were live news feeds of what was going on. People seemed to be relieved that this wasn’t Al Qaeda, understandably, but there wasn’t much talk about discovering who this group was. I’m guessing that will come out in the coming days…
My father just called and told me that Mumbai was being attacked. (I was in India a few years ago and he wanted to know if I knew where either of the hotels were in the city, but he forgot that I didn’t make it as far south as Mumbai.) Out of habit, I went immediately onto the New York Times website, only to be greeted by a front page that has nothing about Mumbai. So, now second nature, I went onto Al Jazeera website which had a story already written with fairly precise information. This seems to be what I’ve found with international news—Al Jazeera not only has the fastest news, but that it is accurate.
There are apparently seven different locations that are being attacked as we speak. I am so sorry for these people, and I hope it’s over soon. This is something that is so curious to me as a communications major. There are pictures and videos on CNN that are almost live. It is scary but fascinating that we can watch this type of attack on a play-by-play basis, something that is such a sign of our times. There are horrific pictures of people running and clutching their bloody limbs, trying to get away from attackers. I wonder what the technology being used today in the news will do for the future of current events coverage, because I can’t imagine seeing anything more up to the minute than what I’m watching right now. People who commit these attacks clearly know that this is what will happen, and are looking for the publicity that these attacks bring to them.
Even before we know who attacked Mumbai, the news reporters on CNN are saying that “India is paying the price for democracy” and for having Western ideals. The anchors have already said “Islamic” several times, but seem weary to point fingers too authoritatively before they know who is taking credit for the attack. Still though, “Muslim militants” are the first suspects who are even brought up. I can’t believe that all of these things are being said before we know anything….but I guess the sadder part is that I’m not all that surprised. I wish I could watch Al Jazeera! All of this is only reinforcing what we’ve read about. I have to go to class, but I’m sure I’ll be writing more later.
I’ve been thinking recently about why I wasn’t too shocked with the TV and/or pop music videos that we watched in class. I guess that as a media student, I knew that the satellite market in the Middle East is huge, so I figured that there would be an array of programming. Although I do have to admit to being a little surprised by the ultra-sexualized music videos popularity. I would have assumed that these videos would be banned from Muslims’ TVs because of their portrayal of women, but I know that people have varying degrees of religiosity. Some of the characters on the shows also surprised me, not because of their sexual natures but because of how Western they looked, from hairstyles to dress.
Sami Yusuf is interesting for me because he is both a pop star and religious, something that I don’t think would happen in the US. Sure, we have some “religious pop music” but for the most part you would never even know that it was religious unless you were told, unlike Yusuf’s music, which is overtly religious. Really religious music is just not popular here, and I think that if someone listened to it, they would be a little ashamed. (Although that may be different in other parts of the country.) The way that Islam infiltrates so many aspects of Muslim’s lives is very interesting to me, and it’s interesting to see how it has an impact on the media and entertainment. This brings me straight to Ramadan TV, and the special serials that are produced there. I looked for a while online to try and find one that had English subtitles, but it was really hard. I think that the most fascinating aspect of Ramadan TV is the variation not only of programming, but of Production value as well. Some of the shows look like they were taped in a basement, while others are extremely produced. I talked to a friend of mine who is Tunisian and he was able to rattle off around 10 shows that he knows were popular this year. It’s interesting that these shows have served the purpose of bringing the family together to watch TV and talk about it, because I think that television in the West is seen as driving families apart. In the West, the TV is turned on at dinner so that no one has to talk to each other, but it seems that Ramadan TV provides something for everyone to discuss after breaking the fast, or just generally during the season.
I guess I still haven’t explained where I’m coming from in relation to this class. I thought of it while I was reading Three Cups of Tea, David Oliver Relin’s book about a man named Greg Mortenson who goes to Pakistan to build schools for children across the region. Mortenson is such a remarkable man but seems more special to me in my final year of college, as he never really sought out to do what he became early in life. He was a mountain climber who stumbled into a village and realized that his life calling is to build schools for these children. Part of the reason that I think Mortenson was so willing to pick up his life and move to Pakistan for months at a time to help these people build a school (and later on goes to many villages to build schools, water lines, and other social necessities) is because he grew up in Tanzania with his missionary parents. This upbringing obviously gives him a very specific worldview.
Now, I am not about to tell you that I grew up at the foot of Everest or anything, but I did grow up traveling quite a bit. Through this I’ve gained a view of the world that has become an inherent part of me. When I read about India or Turkey on Al-jazeera, I think that I understand much of what they’re talking about because I’ve seen some of the places and met some of the people there. It’s not that you can’t understand if you haven’t actually been there, but it certainly makes it easier for me to relate to people knowing that I could possibly have laid eyes on them when I was there. I think that this is part of the reason why Mortenson gets such support for his Pakistani schools from the climbing society on the West Coast. The climbers had either been to K2, near the first town where Mortenson starts his building, or have hoped of going to the mountain. After seeing or reading indepthly about the people living in the mountains, the climbers felt connected to these locals.
I know this is a convoluted way to go about saying this, but the so-called Orientalist view is painfully obvious to me when I am at my family’s home in Nassau County. ::read- upper middle class sheltered neighborhood that only cares about what yacht club you belong to:: However, when I am in New York, and even more so when I am in Europe, I think that people are thinking differently, in a more worldly view. So while I agree that Orientalism is a way of defining one self as Western, educated, modern, etc., I do think that there are many many people who don’t identify themselves by putting others down and assuming that the “other” is living in a cave or a harem or something of the like. I think that if you’re defining yourself in a positive light by putting others down that it would be very difficult to act like Mortenson—selflessly living to help somebody else without being condescending. I hope this makes some sort of sense—these ideas that are so broad yet mean so much are sometimes hard to put down on paper (or blog).